LG Poor customer service and refusal to fix satellite speaker

PaulinGoringbySea

For a Present my wife bought be a receiver (bluetooth) and 2 wired satellite speakers that go with my LG TV and LY sound bar.  Its worked brilliantly until recently as it started buzzing so I went to lG to try and get it fixed under its 12 month warranty.  However my wife bought it from Ebay. It was brand new in a sealed box.

First of all i had to E-mail in with the fault.  Then i had to email in the receipt for the product.  They requested an audio file, but as it was intermittent i called to explain.  LG were adamant so i asked to speak to a manager but they would not let me or put me through.  I Then had to send photos of the serial numbers.  Then I was asked to turn it all off and on again.  I called again and asked to speak to a manager, but again none were available and even though i was told one would call me noone would call me back. I am an engineer (not that you need to be to test it like I did) so I extensively done as much fault finding as I could. I rewired the speakers. I changed the location.  I swapped right to left and left to right and the fault always appeared on one speaker. However LG were not content with this and wanted me to send an audio file of the noise it made. The issue was it was intermittent. Eventually it made the buzzing sound and i recorded it i downloaded some software (Zip file or something similar) to reduce the size of the file and sent it to LG.  LG then responded with thank you but you are not covered teh receipt does not have a VAT registration number on it.  I called again and asked to speak to a manager was told there were none available and one would come back to me. No managers have called me.  I am left with a satellite speaker that buzzes which is 11 months old and I have no come back at all.  I will not be replacing any or any audio or TV with LG in the future.  i found teh whole process painfully long and customer services staff who were very unhelpful.

littleboo

Was it purchased from a private seller or business seller?

MyRealNameToo

PaulinGoringbySea said:

For a Present my wife bought be a receiver (bluetooth) and 2 wired satellite speakers that go with my LG TV and LY sound bar.  Its worked brilliantly until recently as it started buzzing so I went to lG to try and get it fixed under its 12 month warranty.  However my wife bought it from Ebay. It was brand new in a sealed box.

First of all i had to E-mail in with the fault.  Then i had to email in the receipt for the product.  They requested an audio file, but as it was intermittent i called to explain.  LG were adamant so i asked to speak to a manager but they would not let me or put me through.  I Then had to send photos of the serial numbers.  Then I was asked to turn it all off and on again.  I called again and asked to speak to a manager, but again none were available and even though i was told one would call me noone would call me back. I am an engineer (not that you need to be to test it like I did) so I extensively done as much fault finding as I could. I rewired the speakers. I changed the location.  I swapped right to left and left to right and the fault always appeared on one speaker. However LG were not content with this and wanted me to send an audio file of the noise it made. The issue was it was intermittent. Eventually it made the buzzing sound and i recorded it i downloaded some software (Zip file or something similar) to reduce the size of the file and sent it to LG.  LG then responded with thank you but you are not covered teh receipt does not have a VAT registration number on it.  I called again and asked to speak to a manager was told there were none available and one would come back to me. No managers have called me.  I am left with a satellite speaker that buzzes which is 11 months old and I have no come back at all.  I will not be replacing any or any audio or TV with LG in the future.  i found teh whole process painfully long and customer services staff who were very unhelpful.

A manufacturers warranty can have whatever terms and conditions it wants. Certainly some restrict their warranties to those that have bought from official suppliers and so exclude any grey goods bought on auction sites etc. 

Your statutory rights is with the retailer but you only get statuary rights if you buy from a business seller not someone who was selling it as an unwanted gift or similar even if it was still sealed etc. So was the seller a business or a private seller? Have you contacted them?

Is the defective speaker a sealed unit or can it be opened? If you have worked out its not the cabling or the receiver and so definitely the speaker you could try taking it to a local electronics company... crossovers and wiring in these kinds of speakers arent complex 

Have you looked eBay to see if someone is selling the speakers only? Or maybe the whole system but listed as for parts? These things tend to have very low resell value compared to dedicated systems and you may be able to pick up one or a pair for a modest sum which could give you a spare for the future. 

PaulinGoringbySea

Thanks it was a EBay seller not an unwanted gift. And yes i probbaly could take it apart.and fix it myself i have an oscilloscope. I guess i was jusr supprised by the really poor customwr service to what is a multi bilion pound company. I was supprised ghey didnt care about their products and was supprised there seemed no way to escalate. A manager seems impossible to speak to.  I will probably fix myself as stated but it shouldnt come to that.

visidigi

The days of a manager making a difference are long gone. And a billion dollar company as you put it has no relationship with you here anyway.

You say it was an ebay seller, was it a business trading on ebay and individual seller just selling an item they had? You can't expect a full warranty if its a private seller. In any case, if claiming under your consumer rights it would be against the seller, not LG - and you would likely need an independent report to prove it was inherently faulty. 

If you have the skills to fix it yourself, use the luxury you're lucky to have in this scenario.

MyRealNameToo

PaulinGoringbySea said:

I guess i was jusr supprised by the really poor customwr service to what is a multi bilion pound company. I was supprised ghey didnt care about their products and was supprised there seemed no way to escalate. A manager seems impossible to speak to.  I will probably fix myself as stated but it shouldnt come to that.

Companies often become billion dollar firms because they are acutely aware of what their liabilities are and price them into the wholesale price. They then dont sell them at a discount because the wholesaler agrees to take all the risk but then deal with a faulty product themselves because thats worst of both worlds. 

Approaches can vary by product, market etc. They may be good with their TVs as there is a regular stream of customers buying them but replacement rates of home cinema systems is much lower and wholesale prices are tiny which is why loads of firms give them away with a new TV

It's funny, I did a decade of call centre work before finding my career. Even as a teenager my voice was deep male, middle class, negligible English accent but many of the managers were local lasses, often with moderate to strong local accents. There were a vast number of times when a call went from an agent, up to a manager and then back down to me because people didnt believe the team manager was actually a manager but believed that I was because only of how I sounded. 

There are a lot of offices now where team managers often have less technical skills and potentially even authority levels than their staff because their skills are in keeping the team motivated, getting SLAs hit, doing HR processes etc which is broadly unconnected with the work the team does. As a senior claims handler back in the day I could authorise payments up to £25,000 and cosign up to £55,000. Our team leader didnt know how to log into the system but in principle had a £50 sign off limit (my payments under £250 self authorised)

DeathByFluffy

You need to go back to who you bought it from, assuming it was a company. 
You have no rights against LG, as you have no contract with them. 

Unfortunately this is the downside of using eBay to save a few quid - if you'd bought it from a large retailer you'd have plenty of rights against them.